


What makes a monster

by Luce_cm



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arranged Marriage, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:09:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29843367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luce_cm/pseuds/Luce_cm
Summary: An entry for a challenge on Tumblr, with the prompt “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”
Relationships: Ivar (Vikings)/Reader
Kudos: 8





	What makes a monster

**Author's Note:**

> I had a lot of fun with this prompt, though whether or not this is any good remains to be decided. I sincerely hope this makes some sense lol

Ivar taught you many things, in the time that has passed since he made you his wife.

He taught you to play chess. You could never beat him.

Not until you found a way to distract him, to get close enough to make his heart quicken, to touch him just right to make his eyes drawn to you and not the board.

It was easy to take over the board when he was distracted, when words of love poured from his lips like spells, when his eyes -open and maddeningly in love- focused on you instead of the move you’d made.

Ivar taught you how to get his heart.

____

_The sword trembles in your grasp, a myriad of emotions swirling inside you and stealing the steadiness of your hand._

_The woman guides you into exchanging the weapon, tells you which words to repeat._

_You give him your father’s sword, and at the sight of his smile you offer the same, and your lips form the three words that make his smile wider, softer._

_The woman finishes speaking, and you don’t hear the words, too trapped in this moment, but you know what they mean, you know what has changed, you know what just started._

_The ring on his finger is cold against your skin when Ivar cups your face and brings you close to him for a kiss that steals your breath and your every thought._

_His other hand grips at your waist, and you pull away from his lips._

_“Ivar!” You chastise lowly, a small delighted laugh leaving your lips. Your own hand grips at his forearm, careful to keep him upright now that he has exchanged holding onto the crutch for holding onto you._

_He only smiles, a light and enamored chuckle leaving his lips as he tilts your head to him again, and kisses you passionately as the people around you cheer._

_“I love you.” He promises against your lips, before claiming your mouth again. You kiss him back, with all the emotion you can muster._

_When he parts one final time, brow pressed against yours and eyes shinning and light and_ happy _as he looks at you; there’s nothing that could keep you from returning that smile, from bestowing the gentlest of touches on the side of his face, tracing the contour of his wide smile._

_“My wife.” He calls out, lowly, a whisper, a secret._

_“My husband,” You return, and a promise of your own, “I love you.”_

You sit up on the bed, but no matter how slight you try to keep your movements, Ivar still mumbles something that sounds quite close to your name, hand stretched in search for you even as he continues to sleep.

And to the silent command that you return to him you give in, and put your hand over his, and take a moment to let your fingertips trace over the ring on his finger.

_There’s two completely different men making up the one you married, and you have known that for a while._

_A side of him that takes your hand roughly in his and makes you stand at his side even as the gore and blood of the last result of his rage still stains him and the room around you._

_And a side of him that offers disbelieving eyes and trembles at the softest of your touches, that whispers your name like a prayer before a dream that threatens to shatter._

_Whenever you are together in public, Ivar always finds a way to be touching you. To anyone else, anyone that didn’t know him the way you do, the gestures would be insignificant, would be thoughtless._

_Nothing in the way Ivar behaves when he is surrounded by people is thoughtless, none of the ways he moves his body are insignificant._

_And the weight of his arm around you, or the comforting grip of his hand on yours, or even the slightest of touches of his lips over your skin; mean something to you, something you couldn’t even begin to put words to._

_And that change that takes over him, that softening of his features at the sight of you, that lowering of his guard when you are near, that release of tension when you touch him; it is only accentuated when you are alone._

_When you are alone, side by side on the bed you share, secrets spill from his lips as easily as moans, and his eyes never cease to look at you like you remain something out of a dream._

_With the months that follow your wedding, you banish the side of him that is made of jagged edges and cruelty and biting coldness from ever entering the room you share. And he remains, he always will -and you wouldn’t feel for him what you do if it weren’t so- made out of two sides of him, but you lay claim to one, the same way you lay claim to his heart._

Your heart beats quickly in your chest, and the shadows envelop you but you still fear, you still jump at every step and every voice.

Because these people know your face, these people know the way you walk, know what your body looks like. No cloak, no hood, no lowered gaze will help you hide.

Which is why you need the shadows. Which is why the darkness of the forest ahead is comforting.

Which is why when the shouted commands reach your ears, and out they go like hounds searching for Kattegat’s Queen, you run for the comfort of the darkness.

_“I am sorry,” He starts one night, startling you from your lazy exploration of the lines of ink on his chest. You lift your head to find pale blue eyes focused intently on you, searching your gaze with a blend of pain and devotion that tugs your heart in two different directions. Ivar swallows, and continues, “For what I do, for…for what I did.”_

_His hand reaches to take the one that was wandering on his chest, and Ivar holds on tight to it._

_You look into his eyes and say, “You have done nothing but make me happy.”_

_His expression falters, as if for a moment he wants to believe you, but with a furrow that trembles on his brows he insists, “I did many things wrong, when it came to you.”_

_But you shake your head, “You owe me no apologies. It is in the past.”_

_“The Gods…uh, they…they have never given much to me, not without…” He stops, licks his lips, avoids your gaze. You watch in silence, hanging onto the words that are yet to leave his lips, “Not without taking just as much. I…I had my father treat me like he did my brothers and…and I lost him, then I came back and I lost my mother, my home,” He frowns, and his hand tightens on yours. The anger that accompanies the grief, that always will. Ivar continues, “I…I was one more among my brothers, even Björn had to listen to me and I-…Sigurd made me kill him, and they hated me for it, I lost him, and I lost them too.”_

_“Ivar…” The word is hoarse as it leaves your lips, but you don’t know what to say, what to do._

_“Now I have you, and I…I love you,” Each time he says it there’s a fragility in the three words, there’s a fear in the admission that some days is louder than others. Today is the loudest. “I am happy, with you, and I…”_

_His words die with what feels like a dying breath leaving his lips, and you offer the only words you can._

_“You won’t lose me.”_

You never wanted to fight, you never bothered learning. But you know about hiding.

You wait for the man to run past where you are, measure your breathing as you watch him turn his back to you. Your grip on the heavy log is tight, and you pray for strength before you move.

He grunts when you hit his legs, making him fall on the ground. Startled eyes look up at you before you bring the log down again, the scream this time shrill and echoing over the dark forest.

His leg bends wrong at the knee now, and the man pants and keens in pain, but you kneel next to him, and make him listen to you with frantic eyes.

“Go back where you came from, I am not going with you. Tell Ivar…tell Ivar I’m going home, tell him there’s no other way.”

You leave him there, darting for the comfort of the woods with your mind set on the next stage.

On the docks of the small fishing town neighboring Kattegat a ship awaits, Ribe’s flag on it, welcoming you back.

You board it, feeling eyes on you, as if Ivar could see all the way from the place he made you call home what you are doing. The ghost of who still lives, the ghost that haunts you with the burden of what you have betrayed.

You leave him behind, but he follows.

____

Ivar taught you many things, in the time that has passed since he invaded a kingdom and forced you to be at his side.

He taught you to wage war. You could never beat him.

Not until you found a way to get his focus on you, to make him face across a battlefield the eyes of one that promised him love and forever, to grip his heart tight enough in your fist that even across the board where warriors become pawns you see his pain.

It was easy to win each battle when he was distracted, when pain and grief left his lips like blood from a fatal wound, when his eyes -betrayed and still maddeningly in love- focused on you instead of the move you’d made.

Because Ivar taught you how to get his heart.

____

Ribe greets you with a feast and a sacrifice of which you still bear the blood of.

“We have word from across the sea. Kattegat is weakened. Once the King falls, we will be able to take over.” Your mother states, and you nod, swirling the drink in your cup and keeping your eyes on your brother, who seems to cling to her every word, just like when you were children.

“But Ivar the Boneless lives.” A shieldmaiden argues, scarred face frowning at her plate.

“Not for long,” The once Queen consort of Ribe states, spine straightened when she looks at you. You lift your eyebrows, but wait for your mother to speak. “I taught you better than to fail.”

“I haven’t failed. _I_ lured him here, _I_ weakened his army,” You snarl back, not caring for the sudden stillness in the room as mother and daughter face one another. After a breath, you motion with your head and insist, “What is the plan, when they land here? When his army is at our door?”

She sighs, “Your brother-…”

“My brother is too much of a coward to lead his own men into battle, I know,” You silence Emil’s complaint with a gesture of your hand, and your brother obediently stays silent. Turning your gaze to your mother, you insist, “And you were never a good Queen, mother, our men won’t follow you. So, tell me, who will lead them?”

“You,” She doesn’t miss a beat, always so certain the ground will be solid under her feet. You admire that, more than you could ever admit. She lifts a cup your way, “You were the one to return when they believed you had died. If our army is to listen to any of the people of our blood, it is you.”

“You’re making a mistake,” You warn her, but she is certain. You accept her words with a shrug, but one last time you offer, “This mistake will cost you, mother.”

____

Your mother taught you many things, ever since you were old enough to understand the ways of the world.

She taught you to betray. To be a lie in a world of men.

And a lie would know to put on a smile and to summon softness to her gaze, a lie would be able to whisper empty promises of devotion, a lie would do whatever it took to keep the lie alive.

A lie would survive, in a world of men. A world of monsters with the pleading blue eyes of someone a better woman could love, a world of beasts that are soothed at the vow of love sealed over hungry lips.

Your mother taught you to betray it all in the name of love.

____

_The King of Kattegat limps away from the body as if it were nothing, turning to your mother and faking a bow with his free hand._

_“The Princess is coming with me to Kattegat, or I raze this kingdom to ash. Your choice, Dane.”_

_When he leaves, the carefully held breaths in the room seem to stutter past all your lips, and your hand falls slowly from your mouth, no longer trying to keep at bay a scream you didn’t let out anyways._

_“F-Father…” You whimper, and distantly you hear voices, you hear sounds. But you cannot take your eyes off of the lifeless ones of your father, who lays on the floor of his own throne room with a knife deep in his chest._

_Your mother’s hands are trembling as she holds your face and makes you look into her tear-filled eyes. You can still hear her scream in your head, the shrill keen of a woman that saw the man she loved be killed in front of her._

_“We have to kill him,” You whisper, and you wonder dazedly if it isn’t her hands that tremble, but the whole of you. “We have to make him pay. Mother-…”_

_“We will,” She vows, and her voice doesn’t waver, her resolve doesn’t crumble even if she does. “Remember what I told you? You **keep your friends close, but your enemies closer**.”_

_Realization dawns on you, and you start shaking your head. Please, Gods…_

_“No, n-no, don’t make me do this,” You beg, and you feel your shoulders rise and fall but no breath enters your lungs. You refuse to honor a deal your father made when the man he made the deal with still has his blood warm on his hands. “Mother, please, I can’t-…don’t-…”_

_“You will be his wife. It is as arranged,” She snarls, her hands on the sides of your face shaking you slightly. “You will take your father’s sword with you, and you will give it to Ivar the Boneless, and you will bear his ring in exchange.”_

The men that mere months ago bowed their heads to you now look you over with distrust; the word -the title- that they once echoed respectfully is now a sneer as you walk them by.

Hvitserk looks at you like you saw him look at his enemies across a battlefield, unbridled rage and nothing but hate in a once-warm gaze. You still offer a smile as you pass him by, as you walk into Ivar’s tent.

_“Do you have to…to leave so soon? We’ve barely been married a fortnight, Ivar.”_

_Your smile is soft when he turns to you, and you know he only sees love shining in your eyes._

_“Will you miss me?” He teases, but there’s truth behind the question, there’s longing and the need to be reassured of love behind that practiced smile._

_You lift your hand to his face, a teasing yet gentle push of your finger to his temple, before you cup his cheek and delight yourself in the way armor crumbles to dust at your touch._

_“What kind of question is that?” You insist, shaking your head, pretend-fondness on your voice._

_He turns back to his brother, promises the attack on Ribe will happen soon, that the Danes will be theirs. But, he acquiesces with a soft squeeze of your hand on his, after the winter has passed._

_And it dawns on you that with but a touch you’ve bought them more time, almost a year._

_Later that night you lay on his chest, tracing absently the ink marks on it, wondering if he notices how your touch lingers on the skin over his heart. Wondering if he would be naïve enough to believe it a gesture of love._

_When you married him, when you followed your mother’s orders and set not to be devoured by the monster that ruled Kattegat, but to satiate his hunger for long enough that you could escape; you were startled by the…rawness of him._

_The anger always too-quick to flare, the easily infuriated gaze of a man that revels in death, the bare truth of a monster made out of jagged edges and blades that broke as soon as they pierced the skin. That didn’t surprise you._

_But the vulnerability that seemed to startle him as much as you, the secrets spilling from his lips with pale eyes looking up at you expecting answers, the bloodied hands that offered you a battered and cold heart with the unwavering trust that you’d keep it safe. That did surprise you._

_It also surprised you how easily you made him believe you loved him. How easily you got his heart._

_And when his hand grasps yours, stops your aimless wandering over his chest, you smile up at him, warmth in your chest._

_What a terrible thing, what a dangerous thing, to crave love._

You walk out of that tent alive, something no one with a sound mind would believe. No enemy of Ivar the Boneless survives him, much less one that dared betray him.

But you do. And past the disdain, past the disgust, now in the army that surrounds you in this place they have decided to set camp in; there’s surprise, there’s _fear_.

Something, a question, a seed of doubt, shines in Hvitserk’s eyes when he sees you again, and once again you offer only a smile.

_Your feet are bare on the cold ground, and you peer out the small opening into the cold world around you. You don’t have much time left._

_Your heart trembles in your chest as you walk back to the bed, sitting down and hearing the soft rustling of Ivar moving at your back. His hand, almost by instinct, almost by heart, finds your leg, and he moves closer, a sleepy hum leaving his lips._

_His voice, roughened by sleep and something else, calls out your name._

_“I’m here, love.” You tell him quietly, a promise._

_Your thoughts linger on the last word, though._ Love _._

_You grew up hearing the stories of how love turned Gods into mere men, and made men believe themselves to be Gods. There was always a part of you drawn to those tales of how love made the worst of monsters human again._

_They don’t talk about the other way around, though, you think to yourself as your fingertips dance over the ring on Ivar’s finger._

_About how love makes monsters out of humans._

_And, terrifyingly enough, it is not in the absence of love, or the loss of it. No, just in its existence, something as pure, as selfless, as vital as love can make a monster._

_You close your eyes and you can see that horizon that is so familiar yet so strange, so_ wrong _, and as Ivar sits behind you, hand loving even if threatening at your throat, lips reverent and fervent against the skin of your neck; you feel truth pour from your lips._

_“My mother, she…she taught me to lie. Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer, she’d say.”_

_“Hm. And who is your enemy?”_

_Your mind lingers on that horizon, on the distant monsters that walk those streets you so loathe. And you have your answer._

You walk through familiar doors again, and Ribe’s people, Ribe’s warriors, greet you warmly.

You walk up to your mother, who stands by Emil where he sits on his throne, always the voice in his ear. Her eyes are cold when she gazes at you, but there’s the beginning of a smile on her lips.

You bow your head, a show of deference, before you tell her, “Ivar has agreed to a cease fire. He will be here come dawn to…negotiate.”

Once, he would have been a welcome sight in Ribe, when your father let a King from Norway ally himself with Danes, when your family rejoiced at the prospect of having the Princess of Ribe marrying a son of Ragnar. But with his arrival came war, and death; not the peace and allegiance your father was promised.

Last time Ivar the Boneless and the King of Ribe negotiated, your father ended up with a knife in his heart.

There’s hunger in her expression, a hunger you only saw once before. When she wiped your father’s blood from your face and whispered _keep your friends close, but your enemies closer_ , when she turned you into something worse than a monster and told you to kill one.

And dawn comes, and death follows.

____

Your mother taught you many things, ever since you were hungry enough to understand ambition.

She taught you to betray. To be a lie in a world of men.

And a lie would know when to bow her head and fake deference, a lie would be able to weave tales of victory to those underserving, a lie would do whatever it took to keep him alive.

A lie would survive, in a world of men. A world of monsters with blood that runs red from the throat slit on the undeserved throne he sat on, a world of beasts that pretended to have the bond of family run deeper than a bond before the Gods, and lie dead because of that mistake.

Because your mother taught you to betray it all in the name of love.

____

The blood stains your hands, your dress, the knife you still hold on to as you stand in that throne room, the evidence of your betrayal still dripping slowly to the wooden floor.

But you smile, and when you lift your gaze, you find the smile mirrored in familiar lips.

The knife clatters on the blood-soaked floor under your feet, and there’s a little bit of madness in the laugh that leaves your lips as you cross the space between you.

But, as your laugh dissolves against Ivar’s lips, you gather it doesn’t matter.

You close your eyes and surrender to his kiss, you let bloodied hands cup his face and bring him closer to you, and stave off the cold of so many months away from him with the warmth of having him back in your arms.

When you part, his brow presses against yours, and there’s shaky relief in the way he breathes out your name, there’s a heart that was threatened with breaking shining in pale blue eyes.

But there’s love in the way he makes love to you that night, and there’s love in the way your fingers dance over the ink traces of his chest again.

There’s love, and you do not dare ask what it made out of him, or what it made out of you.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope to have taken you by surprise, hopefully more than once lol
> 
> Idk if this is any good but it was fun to write, I hope you liked it, and thank you so much for reading!


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